Software license management is an essential service to ensure the legitimate usage and distribution of a software product. In general, software licenses are either directly installed upon a computing device or provided to the computing device over a network from a centralized source, commonly referred to as a network license server 185 as shown in system 100 of FIG. 1A (Prior Art).
The node associated with the network license server 185 (license node) includes a data store 130 that includes license management software 125 and portable licenses 135 that are associated with at least one software application. Network license server 185 (license node) provides the license management software 125 to client device 110 or the client device 125 comes preloaded with the license management software 125 which enables the transfer of a copy of the portable license 135 to local data store 115 of the client device 110 in the form of relocated licenses 120. The license management software 125 running on client device 110 is responsible for tracking timeouts of the relocated licenses 120. Such network-based relocated licenses 120 are only valid while the client device 110 is connected to the network license server 185 via the network 140, and are only valid for the applicable license period.
Users 105 of a portable client device 110, such as a laptop computer or a personal data assistants (PDAs), must locally install or be provided with applicable licensing information in order to continue using licensed software when disconnected from the network 140. Typically, a relocated license 120 is valid for only a specified license period (e.g., 1 year). Often times, the license period of the relocated license 120 expires when the user 105 is physically remote (i.e., disconnected) from the licensing network 140. This causes the related software applications to cease functioning until the user 105 is able to reconnect the client device 110 to the network 140 to renew the relocated license 120.
An alternate known approach that can provide licensing information to a remote (offline) computing device is shown in system 150 of FIG. 1B (Prior Art). In system 150, a hardware device including memory referred to as a dongle 165 contains one or more permanent licenses 175 in its data store 170. The client device 160 includes pre-loaded license management software 125 that is responsible for tracking timeouts of the permanent licenses 175. When the dongle 165 is connected to the client device 160, the user 155 is provided access to the related software applications provided by permanent licenses 175 without the need for connection to a licensing network, such as network 140 shown in FIG. 1A.
Dongle 165 is a typically proprietary devices and are not widely used for common software products due to the extra cost of hardware and software configuration. While each of these approaches may satisfy a specific niche, neither approach allows a portable license to be securely relocated from a network license server to a remotely located computing device that is disconnected from the network license server. For example, a problem is presented when a commuted license expires while a user is in the field and is thus unable to re-commute because they are unable to connect to the business network.